Posts Tagged ‘Review’

BR’s Full-Bodied Vin Herbé

Friday, March 18th, 2016

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 18, 2016 MUNICH — It would be a novelty to hear Le vin herbé the way composer Frank Martin conceived it. The 1940 secular chamber oratorio reportedly soars when realized in concert by twelve French-singing voices, double string trio, double bass and piano — its lean forces yet complex harmony […]

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Mozartwoche: January’s Peace

Monday, February 15th, 2016

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 15, 2016 SALZBURG — There is a pleasure in arriving in Salzburg with snow on the ground. Or maybe the word is reassurance: the city will be real, not a theme park; the people mostly locals, despite the hollowing out of property ownership here; the profile quiet, even intimate, affording […]

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Die Fledermaus Returns

Sunday, January 31st, 2016

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 31, 2016 MUNICH — Three years ago Bavarian State Opera’s yearly Silvester performances of Die Fledermaus came to a sudden, poorly excused halt. Never mind that they were a global signature of the company; Carlos Kleiber famously led ten of them. As substitutes, the powers-that-be provided La traviata (Verdi was […]

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Muti Crowns Charles X

Thursday, January 14th, 2016

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 14, 2016 MUNICH — Framed by an andante Kyrie and a beguiling instrumental Communion marked grave, Cherubini’s 1825 Coronation Mass for Charles X is one handsome piece of music. No, its movements are not exactly symphonic. They sound bonded to the flow of the service, so much so that unset […]

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Trifonov’s Rach 3 Cocktail

Wednesday, December 30th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: December 30, 2015 MUNICH — The first-movement cadenza exploded out of its context in Daniil Trifonov’s novel reading here Dec. 14 of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. This meant, among other compromises, a slight suppression of everything that preceded it, including the 130-measure development. Trifonov understated the folksy first subject and sped […]

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Maestro, 62, Outruns Players

Sunday, November 22nd, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 22, 2015 MUNICH — At five o’clock last Sunday afternoon, Munich time, three Mariinsky Orchestras began to play. Two of them launched into Pikovaya dama and Die Zauberflöte at the Mariinsky complex in St Petersburg. The third, here at the Gasteig, opened the accompaniment to a witty Shchedrin vocalise. Such […]

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With Viotti, MRO Looks Back

Thursday, November 19th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 19, 2015 MUNICH — Eleven years ago the late Marcello Viotti quit as chief conductor of the Münchner Rundfunk-Orchester because he foresaw existential cuts in its budget. Happily the MRO survived, and today thrives. Tasked with exploring rare repertory, it is artistically the livelier of BR’s two orchestras, forcibly more […]

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Ettinger Drives Aida

Wednesday, September 30th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 30, 2015 MUNICH — Bavarian State Opera’s irredeemably banal 2009 Aida has been spiffed up and its awkward action scheme apparently restudied for a fall run here. Even so, the honors at Monday’s performance (Sept. 28) belonged firmly with the musicians, instrumental and vocal. Mannheim-based conductor Dan Ettinger exerted a […]

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Guillaume Tells

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 23, 2015 MUNICH — Post is under revision. Still image from video © Bayerische Staatsoper Related posts: Nitrates In the Canapés Muti the Publisher Honeck Honors Strauss Kušej Saps Verdi’s Forza Time for Schwetzingen

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Nitrates In the Canapés

Thursday, August 27th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 27, 2015 SALZBURG — Two beggars sat on either side of the entrance to the Haus für Mozart Aug. 6 as attendees arrived for Norma. As if this was not alarming enough — and it disturbed one’s thoughts more than the tense Résistance staging of Bellini’s opera inside — another […]

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